• Coursework and Dissertation Help
  • About the author…
    • #missinghistories
    • Independent Educator: Research-driven Education and Training
    • Writing and Research
    • Independent Researcher

framingthequestion

~ Reflections on memory, history, photography and culture

framingthequestion

Category Archives: Uncategorized

On Holocaust Memorial Day 2022: One Day

27 Thursday Jan 2022

Posted by jaimeashworth in The Holocaust: Representations and Meanings, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Antsemitism, Freddy Berdach, HMD2022, Holocaust, Holocaust Education, Holocaust Memorial Day, One Day, The German Catechism, Uyghur

The Book of Lamentations inscribed on the Holocaust Memorial in Hyde Park. Photo: Jaime Ashworth

How we connect the history and meaning of the Holocaust to other events and processes is in many ways the defining argument in the field today. Whether in academic circles – witness the German Catechism debate last year – or in the hurly-burly of Twitter, how far the Holocaust can act as a comparison or analogue to other things is constantly under review. In the latter environment, amid a stream of careless allusion and under-considered rhetoric, the devaluation of Holocaust imagery and symbols by those opposed to vaccinations and lockdowns has led many people to the adamantine belief that the only thing to which the Holocaust can be compared to is itself. Others meanwhile insist that the Holocaust is losing relevance or significance and should be spoken of in relation to other things: for example, to the crimes committed by colonial empires.

When working with students on dissertation projects, I often compare the process of research to selecting a lens in photography. Do I wish to look at the Holocaust in the fine grain of detail, requiring a narrow and intense focus? Or do I wish to situate the Holocaust in the context of other genocides and abuses of human rights, requiring a wide-angle lens? The problem of course being that either course has advantages and disadvantages. We might speak of a kind of uncertainty principle, in which the specific quality of the Holocaust appears most clearly when it occludes the broader significance, and vice versa: some of the texture of the Holocaust’s singularity is smoothed out by distance when thinking about how it relates to other things.

Keeping these things in balance is a constant challenge, and a worthy kind of memorial in itself. An event as complex and challenging should not be reduced to bromides or platitudes. Passionate argument and discussion about the best and most fitting way to remember this event indicates that it is still relevant. The challenge of relating it to the terrible colonial legacies of European civilisation in a way that preserves the significance of both. The challenge of recognising how ways of thinking about gender and sexuality were part of the poisonous brew of festering assumptions that boiled over in 1930s Germany. The challenge of recognising that attitudes to Roma and Travellers have barely evolved since the 1930s. Above all, perhaps, the challenge of seeing that the Holocaust was only possible because the countries of Europe all, to varying degrees, facilitated, encouraged, or even just tolerated the persecution of Jews because of an underlying antisemitism that seems less dormant with each passing day. The attack on Congregation Beth El in Colleyville, Texas, remember, was carried out by a man from Britain. Just last night, two Jewish men in Stamford Hill were attacked, out of the blue. The Community Security Trust recorded more antisemitic incidents in the first six months of 2021 than in any comparable period since 2013.

From CST “Antisemitic Incidents, January-June 2021” https://cst.org.uk/data/file/f/c/Incidents%20Report%20Jan-Jun%202021.1627901074.pdf

Wiseacres on social media might suggest that it’s a little churlish of me to raise this kind of argument on Holocaust Memorial Day. They might disingenuously imply that Holocaust Memorial Day places the genocide of Jews on a pedestal, drawing the gaze from present-day situations that they see as equivalent. Of course, they would have to ignore the way in which from its inception HMD has sought to provide knowledge and understanding of subsequent genocides. Across the country, survivors from Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Darfur and many other places share their stories and experiences with those who will listen. There are events tonight with representatives of the Uyghur, who are being persecuted in terrible ways in China.

And the survivors of the Holocaust know that their lesson is general, not particular. I had the privilege today to facilitate (on behalf of the Holocaust Educational Trust) the testimony of Freddy Berdach, who escaped Austria in 1938 with his parents. He spoke of how the atmosphere was filled with fear after the Anschluss as crowds of jeering, laughing, spitting Viennese dragged men and women onto the streets. He described how, aged just eight, he became expert in the intricacies of immigration to particular countries – though he still believed that they were safe the moment they stepped on a train to Switzerland, an impression corrected when a fellow passenger revealed his party badge and insisted on strip-searching him. Yet he ended on a note of hope, with an appeal to the general, not the particular. “The Holocaust,” he said, “must become a cultural code for education towards human rights and democracy, for tolerance, and opposition to racism.” It was decided in 2000 to call the day Holocaust Memorial Day over the objections of survivors, who were concerned that they might be accused of demanding special consideration: organsisers argued that the popular recognition of the Holocaust as a paradigmatic genocide would ensure that audiences were given an accessible cognitive framework for learning about other events, in different places and at different times. For survivors, it is always a balance between telling their story – as Lamentations puts it, “[to] weep streams of tears […] because of the destruction of my people” and the knowledge that there is nothing to be done about the past, only the future. As Primo Levi said, “It happened, therefore it can happen again. This is the essence of what we have to say.”

The theme for HMD 2022, “One Day” is a challenging one in this regard, since it seems to draw the gaze to the particular. For the Holocaust was so much more than one day. Taking place across Europe and North Africa and over a period of twelve years, it encompassed days and moments beyond counting. The crux of the problem is that no “One Day” was quite like another, even for those who shared it. For some it was a day of survival, for others it was the end. To return to the metaphor of the camera, however; by thinking about one person on one day we can bring the meaning of the destruction into focus more clearly. For me, it will always be the faces of Israel and Zelig Jacob, photographed on their arrival in Birkenau, which will encapsulate the tragedy more sharply than any other. That one day was their last day – this photograph the only known image of them.

Israel and Zelig Jacob, on the ramp in Birkenau, May 1944. USHMM #77218

The real danger of memorial days is that they do all the work. Jacob Rees-Mogg today told the Commons that there would be no statement today on the report into Downing Street parties during lockdown since the government wanted to “devote the whole time to debating Holocaust Memorial Day.” I am sure I speak for many others when I say that while the memory of the Holocaust is something MPs should be concerned with, it should not be used as a way of blocking MPs from doing their jobs by holding the government to account. To use the memory of the Holocaust as a filibuster cheapens the democracy Freddy Berdach prizes so highly, as well as the experiences of those who survived.

This is because Holocaust Memorial Day is not – or should not be – a moment for navel-gazing. The Year 10 students listening to Freddy Berdach asked how they and others can continue to remember the Holocaust. As I explained to them, I chose not to ask Freddy this question. Not because I don’t think he would have an answer – I’m sure his remarkable mind and soul would have something to say – but because I don’t think the question of what the Holocaust will mean is really his problem any more – it’s ours. The students spent the last half hour before the end of the day writing to Freddy about how they are going to take what they have heard forward. For it is not today that is most important, nor yesterday, but tomorrow. That is the one day that really counts. For joy cometh in the morning, if only we are there to see it.

Meme Fever

22 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by jaimeashworth in Culture and Politics, The Holocaust: Representations and Meanings, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Coronavirus, COVID-19, COVID19, Holocaust, Holocaust Education, Holocaust memory, Infodemic, Pandemic

Photo: Jaime Ashworth, 2020.

The era of COVID-19 has seen two processes of contagion. The first is, of course, the disease itself, with its terrible toll on individuals, communities and nations. The second, however, is what the WHO and others have termed an infodemic: defined very precisely a couple of weeks ago by a working group.

An infodemic is an overabundance of information—some accurate and some not—that occurs during an epidemic. In a similar manner to an epidemic, it spreads between humans via digital and physical information systems. It makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it. (Tangcharoensathien et al., 2020)

I’m working on a more detailed piece about the infodemic, to go alongside a collection of my photos from this year. In the meantime, however, I’ve been looking at the memes shared in my social media echo chambers. Sometimes they make me laugh but as a class of discourse they make me profoundly uneasy.

Memes are directly compared to viruses by the epidemiologist Adam Kucharski in his book, The Rules of Contagion (2020). He notes the problems posed by “simplistic anecdotes and ineffective solutions” for disease control and begins the book with an account of how he (accidentally) caused “a small outbreak of misinformation.”

The irony is that memes are simplistic anecdotes masquerading as panaceas. Like viruses, memes have no function but their own reproduction with no regard for the health of the host. Matters are further complicated by the fact that social media offer a perfect environment for them to thrive. Back in the day, “Frankie Says” was a meme, but it’s harder to edit a t-shirt than it is to share something online. One meme in particular recently caught my eye.

This meme is part of longer and bigger debates about education, race and identity. I do not claim any priority for this meme’s importance other than the fact I’ve spent my adult life teaching and learning about the Holocaust and for that reason find it deeply problematic, educationally and philosophically. My experience allows me to locate the sources of my ire because I have expertise: itself a suggestion that the reduction of history to lessons without content is not very practical. But I digress.

Firstly, the idea that the second and third parts of the statement can be accomplished without the first is problematic. Without the murder of six million Jews being remembered, the second statement makes no sense: what is the “it” that was required? And in the third statement, the “history repeating itself” is the murder of six million Jews that apparently the author thinks is optional to remember.

Second, and much more problematic, is the weasel formulation of the first statement. If the word “only” or “just” were added, the sentiment might make more sense (though as I’ve just explained I don’t think it really does). But as written it comes very close not to suggesting that education cannot be reduced to simply memorising (which of course is true and something that all good teachers work hard to ensure) but that education equals not remembering the murder of six million Jews.

This ambiguity is difficult because with a negative reading of an oddly formed sentence, the meme seems to be suggesting that instead of anchoring our understanding of the world to historical facts and debates, it should instead come from belief in an unstated mechanism that led “ordinary Germans” to be “convinced that it was required”. Setting aside the complex historical debate about degrees of knowledge, cooperation, acceptance and resistance this dismisses (the author of the meme can’t be bothered so why should I?), the implication is that children should be “educated” in some unstated monocausal view. Another word for this is indoctrination.

One of the key aspects of indoctrination is ignoring facts in the interests of clarity: such as, for example, downplaying the importance of the victim group of “what happened”. The sleight-of-hand with which this example severs meaning from content (thus rendering it meaningless) is the primary source of my anger.

Ironically, the indoctrinated have historically been very bad at spotting the writing on the wall because, well, they were indoctrinated to believe it wasn’t important. Such a process seems to have taken place very imperfectly in Nazi Germany, chiefly because the Third Reich only lasted twelve years. The debate about why and how this happened, which the author of this meme either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about, is ongoing. But the desire to present children with “lessons” without evidence is certainly among the phenomena involved: along with ensuring that the benefits of oppression and murder were widely shared, and that perpetrators were placed in stressful, confusing situations with alcohol to dull the senses when reality could no longer be explained but simply avoided. But reiterating the nature of that reality is crucial, educationally, because without it, the question “Why is this important?” is hard to really answer.

Because, finally, let’s not forget that forgetting victims is only in the interests of the perpetrators. Himmler termed the murder of European Jewry “a glorious page in our history that can never be written”. Hitler asked “Who now remembers the Armenians?” This meme asks us to forget the Jews and replace them with an amorphous “victim” group that makes the “lessons” meaningless. The Nazis oppressed and murdered a whole range of groups and individuals, but to try and remove their primary victim group is an assault on memory and an abuse of education. Subject (the Nazis) verb (murdered) and object (six million Jews) are all required for any conclusions to have any relevance. This is true, by the way, in teaching anybody about anything. The nature of the offence is a fundamental part of teaching to understand the past and (hopefully) avoid its repetition.

This is just one meme in an ocean of memes. As in Hamlet’s soliloquy, it is tempting to think we can “take arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them.” But this is a metaphor for futility. We are adrift and lost: what we can do (all we can do, perhaps) is sound out the ideas beneath the surface of individual examples in the hope we will find solid ground underneath.

No Exit…

31 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by jaimeashworth in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Brexit

Why will the idea of “associate citizenship” of the EU not go away? In the last few months, since it became clear that the British drive to exiting the EU was unstoppable, I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve seen positing this as some kind of answer.

I understand the appeal. In 2003, I waited with many others in a very crowded bar in Kraków to learn the result of the referendum on EU accession. I remember vividly the cheers of relief that accession would go ahead the following year. For many, that day, and the accession day itself, marked a return to Europe – if Poland had ever left. The national anthem records the March of troops in the Napoleonic wars “z ziemi Włoskiej do Polski”: from the lands of Italy to Poland. A series of events that began with the German and Russian invasions in 1939 had finally entered a new phase. One which promised to fulfil the dreams of 1989: that Poland could be a liberal democratic member of “the European club”.

In 2004, on the first day of membership, many of us watched the news reporting on Poland’s new “second capital” in Brussels. Even through the blur of a hangover (it was a very good party) I could feel the optimism.

Time has not been kind to that optimistic vision of Polish society, which will be the subject of a future piece. But it should remind us that membership of the EU can exert a powerful hold on the imagination of those denied it, and that many of those EU citizens whose future residency in the UK is now uncertain understand far better than we do why the EU is important. For us (ironically) the Polish poem of exile, Pan Tadeusz, may describe our plight:

“Lithuania, my country, thou art like health; how much thou shouldst be prized only he can learn who has lost thee. To-day thy beauty in all its splendour I see and describe, for I yearn for thee.”

But we need to recognise that the EU isn’t a state. It can’t issue passports: only member states can do that, though the words “European Union” remind holders that collectivities come in different sizes. If we are to make the best of this awful mistake, we need to be clear what we are trying to hang on to.

We also need to be clear that some sort of boutique accommodation with reality for Remainers isn’t on offer. This is happening and we can’t engage with the facts if we are pursuing this kind of fantasy.

Secondly, we need to stop and think quite carefully about the idea of citizenship. Asking governments to create a lesser form of citizenship is open to abuse by issuing governments. What if the sentimental desire for Britons to try and deny the realities of this situation opened the door for them to decide that migrants and refugees could only apply for these kinds of documents? Do we want our own government to devise such a scheme?

It is an unfortunate coincidence that Britain’s exit from the EU is formalised in the week of Holocaust Memorial Day. The stripping of German citizenship from Jews was a fundamental attack on their rights, which made all the others easier to frame and justify in law. We should not be rushing to create second-class citizens, but instead insisting on the fullest citizenship for all, in the widest possible collectivity.

On Holocaust Memorial Day 2020: Stand Together

24 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by jaimeashworth in Heritage Politics, The Holocaust: Representations and Meanings, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#StandTogether, aboutholocaust.org, Child Refugees, HMD2020, Holocaust, Holocaust Memorial Day, Kindertransport, Leo Baeck, Regina Jonas

The Book of Names in Block 27 at Auschwitz. Photo: Jaime Ashworth, 2015.

Yesterday, at a ceremony hosted by the Association of Jewish Refugees at Belsize Square Synagogue, I listened to testimony from Frank Bright, a survivor of Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. Aged 91 and frail, he began by asking the room “Can you hear me?” The plaintive yet essential nature of his question took me aback for a moment.

The theme for Holocaust Memorial Day asks us to #StandTogether, but what does this mean? Are we listening?

In the last year, I have spent a lot of time working on the aboutholocaust.org project for the World Jewish Congress and UNESCO. The website contains a range of questions and answers which aim to explain key concepts and key events, and which illustrate them through the life stories of individuals.

As part of this, individuals who have been familiar names have also been developed into full personalities: the humanisation of the Holocaust is more than knowing a name, it is becoming aware of who that person was. The American science-fiction writer Orson Scott Card has many views which I profoundly reject, but his description in the novel Speaker for the Dead of how we should understand the people of the past continues to be something I try and live up to:

…to understand who a person really was, what his or her life really meant, the speaker for the dead would have to explain their self-story – what they meant to do, what they actually did, what they regretted, what they rejoiced in. That’s the story that we never know, the story that we never can know – and yet, at the time of death, it’s the only story truly worth telling.

To fulfil this task for the victims of the Holocaust would take centuries. The Book of Names produced by Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial, and kept in the Jewish Exhibition at Auschwitz, contains four million names of victims. Speaking to students, I point out that it actually commemorates three groups: those who died and whose names are recorded (Yad Vashem is taken from the Book of Isaiah and means “a monument and a name”); the space at its front where the other two million names we may never know, or even be able to guess at, should go; and the surviving family members whose pages of testimony are condensed into this vast artefact. And these are the barest of details: names, dates, place of birth, place of death (if this is even known). Their hopes, their fears, their aspirations and their regrets all went up, quite literally, in smoke. Telling some of their stories is the only way I can stand with them.

Three of the questions I have answered this year for aboutholocaust have stuck in my mind as I’ve reflected upon the idea of standing together.

Firstly, “Did you know that thousands of Jewish children left Germany without their parents to escape Nazi persecution?” The story of the Kindertransport is well-known and often used to justify a narrative of British moral superiority. The footage of the late Sir Nicholas Winton on That’s Life! in the 1980s, surrounded by the adults he saved as children, is incredibly moving. But for every child who came, many more did not, to say nothing of the parents who were forced to accept separation, usually permanent, as the price of securing their children’s safety. This week, as I sat in a room with some of them in Belsize Square, another of those children, Lord Dubs, was definitively frustrated in his campaign to ensure the safety and security of child refugees separated from their families. We must ask with whom we are standing, and why, and whether the cause of unity for its own sake is worth it. I stand with the children.

Secondly, “Why were there more Jews in Albania in 1945 than before WW2?” in 1938, the Jewish population of Albania was around 200 people. At the end of the war, it was around 1800, as Jews from Germany, Austria, Serbia, Greece and Yugoslavia arrived, in transit to the Americas, Turkey and Mandate Palestine. They had been kept safe by a code of toleration and hospitality called Besa, which means “to keep the promise”. As Lime Balla, one of the rescuers, described it:

We were poor – we didn’t even have a dining table – but we never allowed them to pay for the food or shelter. I went into the forest to chop wood and haul water. We grew vegetables in our garden so we all had plenty to eat. The Jews were sheltered in our village for fifteen months. We dressed them all as farmers, like us. Even the local police knew that the villagers were sheltering Jews.

To stand together is not just a matter of symbolism. It is to act as well, whatever our circumstances, recognising the capacity that each of us has to do something.

Finally, the work on Rabbi Leo Baeck was inspiring. The leader of German Jewry in the 1930s, Baeck chose to stay with his community, as did Rabbi Regina Jonas, a pioneering female rabbi. Both were deported to Theresienstadt, from where Jonas was deported to Auschwitz and murdered in late 1944. I searched in vain for a statement of why they chose to stand together with their community, when in both cases they had options of hiding or escape. The closest I came was the prayer written by Baeck for Yom Kippur in 1935:

Our history is the history of the grandeur of the human soul and the dignity of human life. In this day of sorrow and pain, surrounded by infamy and shame, we will turn our eyes to the days of old. From generation to generation God redeemed our fathers, and he will redeem us in the days to come. We bow our heads before God and remain upright and erect before man. We know our way and we see the road to our goal.

In short, to stand together is sometimes all we can do, recognising that we do so on a road whose ultimate destination is impossible to know. So we must hold hands as we go.

Everyday witness

04 Sunday Nov 2018

Posted by jaimeashworth in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

IMG_0951

Image credit: Jaime Ashworth, 2018.

About a year ago, a Religious Studies GCSE student of mine and I were discussing martyrdom. She asked if there were Jewish martyrs. I replied that no, not really, but if she wanted an alternative viewpoint, she should ask the organiser of her synagogue refreshment rota and see what their response was.

We laughed at the time, but that now seems rather hollow, in the wake of the attack last week during Shabbat services at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. The deaths of eleven members of that community in such a violent and senseless manner has shocked and saddened people all over the world, both Jews and non-Jews.

One story described how the Orthodox chevra kadisha, or burial society, had held a vigil outside the crime scene where the victims’ bodies remained while police investigated. Rabbi Daniel Wasserman, who runs the burial society, was quoted as saying “These are people who were killed because they were Jewish, they are bodies of holy martyrs.”  

Along with many others, I have been shocked to silence by the tragedy. I hesitate, however, before the word martyrs. With its origin in Greek, the word originally meant witness, but has come to mean (according to the Cambridge English Dictionary) “a person who suffers very much or is killed because of their religious or political beliefs, and is often admired because of it”. The American Merriam-Webster offers “a person who voluntarily suffers death as the penalty of witnessing to and refusing to renounce a religion”. The Oxford definition is “a person who is killed because of their religious or other beliefs”.

While I accept that language is fluid and evolving, the weight of the dictionary definitions seems to be that a martyr has agency in their death: something which is hard to say of those killed last week. They did not choose to be attacked, nor did they sacrifice themselves voluntarily: they were murdered when they should have been safe, in a place which should have offered sanctuary.

The issue of how to talk about the victims of suffering and persecution is a central aspect of my work as a Holocaust educator. Martyr has become a common way of describing Jewish victims, at least partly because of the Holocaust.

Many memorials describe those killed by the Nazis and their collaborators as martyrs. I recently attended a funeral at the main Orthodox Jewish cemetery near London and the memorial to the Holocaust there characterises the dead in this way. Yad Vashem in Jerusalem was founded as the Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority: it still frames Yom Hashoah, the Jewish day for remembering the Holocaust, in this way, as ‘Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day’.

But Kiddush Hashem, to die for the sanctification of G-d’s name, is not quite martyrdom. Jewish law is clear that Jews are not permitted to commit murder, incest, or blasphemy under any circumstances – if the choice is between doing these things and death, then death has to be accepted. Otherwise, models of resistance emphasise that pikuach nefesh, preserving the soul, is preferable: the same principle that means the ill and infirm can break even the most solemn fasts if they need to; and kiddush ha’chayim, sanctification of life, enjoins Jews to aspire to meaningful survival: by learning, educating and recording.

Working as an educator, I have found devising and running sessions exploring some of the different ways in which Jews attempted not just to survive, but survive as Jews, inspiring and moving. The neat dichotomy of martyrs and heroes into which many books and resources still, almost unconsciously, divide the victims, neglects the diversity and variety of the – often very ordinary – heroism involved. Those caught up in the Holocaust found food, raised and educated children, and loved, and learned – in the face of implacable, reckless hate. The Nazis didn’t care if people were good Jews, bad Jews, old Jews, young Jews or any other descriptor: their aim was simply, as the attacker is said to have shouted before opening fire last week, that “All Jews must die”.

The victims of the Holocaust also, however, probably also made mistakes, forgot their obligations, and failed to live up to their best imagining of themselves. This, after all, is much of what being an everyday, ordinary human is.

And it is in that everyday ordinariness that the horror of last week resides. As I understand it, a baby-naming ceremony had just been held. Early in morning services, before (as the rabbi later wryly commented) most of those with busy lives and large families had managed to arrive. Instead, the victims were older, lonelier, more vulnerable, perhaps depending on the synagogue for much of the structure of their daily lives. This was not a heroic choice to assert identity, but a mundane choice to make their way to shul through the drizzle, shrug off their coats, and engage in celebrating the most everyday of miracles, a new life. This was not martyrdom or sacrifice, but simple, brutal murder. It even lacked the poetry to be described as tragedy. It was simply carnage.

We live in an age where we are exposed to information in previously unimaginable quantities: from books and magazines, from news, from advertising. Above all from the ability of friends and acquaintances to constantly present us with new facts, new ideas, and the nagging sense that someone, somewhere, is “doing life” better than we are. The average person today has to make constant decisions about what we know – and how that fits or not with what we thought we knew yesterday – in a way that would utterly confound our ancestors. In that context, it is understandable to use formulaic words and phrases which streamline our process of meaning-making.

But as the rabbi I listened to yesterday morning reminded me and anyone else who listened, words are fundamental: words have power. Creation in Jewish understanding was a speech act. As we remember the dead of Pittsburgh, we have an immense responsibility to do what those in power seem unwilling or unable to do – remember that our words bring the world into being. We are all witnesses to the consequences of doing so – or of not doing so. So, belatedly, Shabbat shalom.  

Shocks, Forks and Fractures

01 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by jaimeashworth in Book Reviews, Culture and Politics, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Brexit, India Floods, literature, Mark Haddon, The Pier Falls, Trump

IMG_3559

The title story of The Pier Falls by Mark Haddon (Vintage, £8.99), 347 pp.) is a harrowing account of how an idyllic seaside afternoon in the 1970s turns to tragedy. In spare, compelling prose, Haddon describes the initial warnings as the rivets holding the pier together progressively fail. ("There is a faint tremor underfoot as if a suitcase or stepladder has been dropped somewhere nearby.") He describes in merciless detail the fracturing of a summer afternoon into fragments, neatly chronicling each death and the aftermath as normality slowly settles over those left apparently unscathed. ("None of the survivors sleeps well. They wake from dreams in which the floor beneath them vanishes. They wake from dreams of being trapped inside a cat's cradle of iron and wood as the tide rises.")

Haddon's prose captures the way in which trauma is observed from the inside: slowly, but too fast to fully register; completely, but only in hindsight. Another word for this is shock. As Naomi Klein has recently written, "A state of shock is what results when a gap opens up between events and our initial ability to explain them."

Britain in 2017 feels similar to the disintegrating pier in Haddon's story, shuddering as the rivets joining us to the EU are worked loose, the fissures in our society are thrown into ever-sharper relief, and international politics seem more and more threatening. It's the shock that many of us experienced last year in the sweaty early hours of June 24, watching the numbers move like a tide, rolling upward until, as the dawn broke, the result was confirmed.

Many of us experienced that feeling of shock again in November as we watched Hillary Clinton's chances of being President go from being assured, to doubtful, to impossible. A feeling which deepened in January as Trump's inaugural speech made clear he intended to govern as he had campaigned: boorish, aggressive, chauvinistic.

Most importantly, it's the feeling as we watched the flames sweep across Grenfell Tower. Knowing what the inexorable progress of the wall of fire meant – as human beings, unable to stop ourselves imagining ourselves in the place of those inside – but powerless to stop it.

It's a feeling I've revisited many times this summer, as different journeys have taken me past the tower: blackened and silent, the sun still catching on glass that has not been shattered, a grim negative of the neighbouring towers. ("A moment's weakness had caused this horror, the way a single spark from these struck flints bloomed into the fires that surrounded her.")

The footage from Houston this week has brought that feeling again. Watching the waters rise and the roads disappear beneath the floods should remind us that we are always vulnerable to the environment we build through and over (instead of around and with). The levees and dams have creaked and overflowed, and the bonds of society have proved correspondingly frail. Looting and unrest have necessitated curfews, as stretched civil authorities focus on the crisis. President Trump's response, ("The storm, it's epic what happened. But you know what, it happened in Texas and Texas can handle anything.") encapsulates the dogma of small government and its failure to appreciate the importance of collective action to avert rather than manage times of crisis. ("He's never thought it this way, that lives are held in common, that we lose a little something of ourselves with every death.") In situations like this, the heroism of individuals needs to be backed by the state rather than left to fend for itself. We cannot allow ourselves to be flattered for our self-sufficiency by those whose job is to prepare.

In India, Bangladesh and Nepal, far worse flooding seems to be producing a different reaction to similar problems. The Times of India shows crowds working with rescuers, bringing food and helping to clear rubble. At root, though, the complaints are similar too: "Why does nothing change? Why are we left to fend for ourselves when they had weather forecasts warning them of extremely heavy rainfall?" asked one Indian columnist quoted in the Guardian. The residents of Grenfell know the feeling, as did the inhabitants of New Orleans in 2005.

In Britain, meanwhile, we continue to make our own weather: working toward "freeing" ourselves from the EU. The Brexit negotiations have resumed and it's clear that this government is determined to ignore the reality that 27:1 make for unhealthy odds. On Ireland, on the single market, on the customs union, on free movement; the position of Her Majesty's Government is that cake policy must remain separate from eating policy.

A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister said this week that the government was determined to try and discuss the future trading relationship alongside the withdrawal deal, despite the insistence of the EU that this won't happen. As any country that has negotiated EU accession could tell you, negotiating with the EU on these matters is not a negotiation as conventionally understood. In accession negotiations, the only question is when, not if, individual countries would accept EU law and regulation (this, by the way, is a powerful practical argument for remaining). In our case, we lit the blue touch paper by triggering Article 50 and now require all 27 member nations' agreement to blow it out again, even temporarily. British inability to understand collective behaviour is quite profound (at least among politicians, who are usually happy to talk about what they claim people want but often less keen to engage with what they need).

Internationally, meanwhile, the Prime Minister arrived in Japan at an interesting moment, her plane presumably virtually banking to avoid a North Korean missile. Asked about the escalating (or at least not subsiding) crisis in South-East Asia, she termed the launch "outrageous" and suggested that the UN Security Council should resolve the problem. Collective solutions are good sometimes, it would seem, though the structure of the Security Council gives Donald Trump (along with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jingping) a veto on any solution, so it's likely to be a question of state-to-state solutions in the end.

Haddon's stories have at their core an awareness that traumatic events alter our histories, both individual and collective. ("Today will be different, not simply shocking but one of those moments when time itself seems to fork and fracture and you look back and realise that if things had happened only slightly differently you would be leading one of those other ghost lives speeding away into the dark.") He skilfully evokes the sensation of escape and the chill of privilege it occasions. ("Everyone can feel the thrilling shiver of the Reaper passing close, dampened rapidly by the thought of those poor people.")

The stories also underline, however, that those forks and fractures are constructed of choice. Some choices are positive: in the final story, The Weir, a lonely divorcé rescues a young woman from suicide by drowning, forming a friendship that sustains them both. Mostly, though, the choices of Haddon's characters are negative. In Wodwo, Gavin, a venal middle-class TV presenter, shoots a stranger who interrupts a family Christmas. The stranger makes a macabre recovery, promising to return the following year: Gavin struggles to cope with his actions, becoming homeless before being found by the same stranger and sent back to his family home to interrupt the next Christmas. He approaches the same French window, seeing the changes wrought by the year in his family. And then they look up: he has become the stranger, even to himself. ("The intruder light clicks on. He knocks twice on the glass. As one his family turn to look at him.") What could he have done differently? What can we do differently? Who's making the choices? We need answers but first we have to ask the questions.

Brexit: Now wash your hands

01 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by jaimeashworth in Culture and Politics, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Brexit, Brexit Bill, Jeremy Corbyn, Keir Starmer

I doubt I’m alone in having received an email from my MP last night explaining their vote to trigger Article 50. As my MP is Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit Secretary, his views – and indeed his speech – have been widely reported. I wanted to share my reply as a kind of protest against the failure of the Labour Party to do its current job and effectively challenge and hold the government to account. Voting for this makes that hard to envisage. One Labour MP reportedly told Channel 4’s Gary Gibbon that they “need a bath after that”: they appear to be their own shower. 

Dear Keir, 
Thank you for this email. I saw your speech in the Commons earlier today and was impressed as usual by your clarity, honesty and integrity. 

On the point at issue, however, I disagree. A majority of your constituents – myself included – voted clearly to Remain and I had hoped that you would follow suit, particularly since the government has a majority and there is no need to contradict the democratically agreed policy of the party – parliamentary colleagues such as John Mann and Gisela Stuart will likely ensure the electoral cowardice of the government achieves what pass for its aims. 

I’ve just seen another clip of your speech again. You are a democrat and have the backing of party policy, your constituents and most importantly your conscience to lead you into the ‘No’ lobby tomorrow evening.
Respectfully yours,
Jaime Ashworth 

On Tue, 31 Jan 2017 at 19:58, Keir Starmer <keir@camdenlabour.org.uk> wrote:

Keir Starmer 

Dear Jaime,

As you know, the EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill is before the House of Commons this week. Since many of you have strong
views on the issue, I wanted to write to you to set out my approach to this Bill. I apologise for the lengthy email – but none of this is straightforward!

Having campaigned across the country – with many members
from Holborn & St Pancras CLP – for a ‘Remain’ vote, I was
saddened and frustrated by the outcome of the referendum. For me and for many Labour MPs the Article 50 vote now presents an agonising choice and I have thought long and hard about the right course of action.

Although I am fiercely pro-EU, I am also a democrat. The Labour Party voted in favour of the Referendum Act, which paved the
way for the referendum, and everyone who campaigned knew the outcome would be decisive. Some have argued that the referendum was merely
advisory. Legally that is true, but the arguments are not just legal –
they are deeply political and, politically, the notion that the
referendum was merely a consultation exercise to inform Parliament holds no water. Equally the argument the leave vote was only 37% of those eligible to vote loses its strength against the argument that less than 37% voted to remain. Neither side can claim that those who did not vote would have voted either to leave or to remain. We simply do not know.
There is a wider point. Since I was appointed to my current role, I have travelled all over the UK – including to Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. I have met groups and individuals, held public events, talked to businesses large and small and discussed Brexit with different political parties and
leaders. 

From this, the evidence is clear: As a society we are more divided now than at any time in my life. The divide is deep and, in some instances, it is bitter. Labour must play its part in healing that divide: it cannot do so if it refuses to accept the outcome of
the referendum.

That is why I have repeatedly said that although I wish the outcome of the referendum had been different, I accept and respect
the result. 

It follows that it would be wrong simply to frustrate the process and to block the Prime Minister from starting the Article 50 negotiations. I will not therefore be voting against the EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill this week.

The ballot paper on 23 June last year did not, however, give the Prime Minister power to act as she sees fit or to change our domestic laws or policy. That is why I have tabled a number of Labour amendments that would significantly improve the Bill and ensure Parliament can hold the Prime Minister to account
throughout negotiations. I will be taking these amendments through for Labour in the House of Commons next week.

First, these amendments would ensure MPs have a meaningful vote on the final Brexit deal – that means the House of Commons has the first say on any proposed deal before it is considered by the European Council and Parliament. This would strengthen the
House of Commons’ ability to influence the negotiating process
and mean that MPs could send the Government back to the negotiating table if they are unhappy with the proposed final deal.

Second, the Government should report back to Parliament
regularly during the negotiations so that progress can be known and
checked. Labour has also tabled amendments that establish a number of broad principles the Government must seek to negotiate, including protecting workers’ rights and securing full tariff and impediment free access to the Single Market. We will also try to ensure that the legal status of EU citizens already living in the UK is guaranteed before negotiations begin – a point that is long overdue.

It is also important to recognise that the triggering of Article 50 is merely the start of the process for leaving the EU, it is not the end.

Any changes the Prime Minister seeks to make to domestic law would need separate legislation to be passed through Parliament,
whether through the Great Repeal Bill or more widely. Labour will
argue throughout for a Brexit deal that puts jobs and the economy
first and protects vital workers’ rights and environmental
protections. We also totally reject the Prime Minister’s threat to rip
up the economic and social fabric of the country and turn Britain into a tax haven economy if she fails in her negotiations.

As Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the EU I have been very clear that Labour will hold the Government to
account every step of the way. 

I know that many members have urged me to reflect the
75% Remain vote in Holborn and St Pancras by voting against Article 50 and resigning my post in the Shadow Cabinet.

I see the argument, but that would prevent me pressing Labour’s amendments, it would prevent me questioning the Government relentlessly from the front bench over the coming years and
it would prevent me fighting as hard as I can for a Brexit on the
right terms. 

It would be to walk off the pitch just when we need effective challenge to government. I believe that would be the wrong
thing to do.

I know that not everyone will agree with my approach,
but I hope that my explanation helps.

All best,

Keir

Keir Starmer

Labour Member of Parliament for Holborn and St.
Pancras 

http://www.keirstarmer.com/

http://www.keirstarmer.com

Holborn and St Pancras Labour Party, 110 Gloucester
Avenue, NW1 8HX



Recent Posts

  • On Holocaust Memorial Day, 2023: Ordinary People
  • On Holocaust Memorial Day 2022: One Day
  • Languages of the Holocaust
  • Where were you when…?
  • An Argument that Must Not Abate

Archives

  • January 2023
  • January 2022
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • June 2021
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • January 2019
  • November 2018
  • January 2018
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • August 2016
  • March 2016
  • August 2015
  • August 2014
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013

Categories

  • Book Reviews
  • Culture and Politics
  • Heritage Politics
  • missinghistories
  • Photography and Visual Culture
  • The Holocaust: Representations and Meanings
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • framingthequestion
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • framingthequestion
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...